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Title: 17-Year-Old Student Builds 3D-printed Drone In Garage, Interests DoD
and MIT

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/15/0148...

"Cooper Taylor is only 17 years old, but he's already trying to revolutionize
the drone industry," writes Business Insider: His design makes the drone more
efficient, customizable, and less expensive to construct, he says. He's built
six prototypes, 3D printing every piece of hardware, programming the
software, and even soldering the control circuit board. He says building his
drone cost one-fifth of the price of buying a comparable machine, which sells
for several thousand dollars. Taylor told Business Insider he hopes that "if
you're a first responder or a researcher or an everyday problem solver, you
can have access to this type of drone." His innovation won him an $8,000
scholarship in April at the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, funded
by the Defense Department. Then, on May 16, he received an even bigger
scholarship of $15,000 from the US Navy, which he won after presenting his
research at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair... It
all started when Taylor's little sister got a drone, and he was disappointed
to see that it could fly for only about 30 minutes before running out of
power. He did some research and found that a vertical take-off and landing,
or VTOL, drone would last longer. This type of drone combines the multi-rotor
helicopter style with the fixed wings of an airplane, making it extremely
versatile. It lifts off as a helicopter, then transitions into plane mode.
That way, it can fly farther than rotors alone could take it, which was the
drawback to Taylor's sister's drone. Unlike a plane-style drone, though, it
doesn't need a runway, and it can hover with its helicopter rotors. Taylor
designed a motor "that could start out helicopter-style for liftoff, then
tilt back to become an airplane-style motor," according to the article. And
now this summer he'll be "working on a different drone project through a
program with the Reliable Autonomous Systems Lab at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology." Thanks to Slashdot reader Agnapot for sharing the
news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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